Environment

Editorial from February 2009 edition of Socialism
Today, magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales)

“a historic failure that will live in infamy”

The UN conference on climate change (Cop15), held in Copenhagen 7-18
December, was a fiasco. The Independent called it “a historic failure
that will live in infamy”. After years of preparation, the
representatives of 193 countries discussed and wrangled for two weeks.
In the closing hours, leaders such as Barak Obama and Wen Jinbao (and
Gordon Brown) flew in, supposedly to break the deadlock. All of them
accepted the urgency of reaching agreement. Unless global warming is
limited to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the planet faces
catastrophe. But no agreement was reached, let alone the framework for a
binding international treaty, Cop15’s original aim. Backroom discussions
between the US, China and a handful of neo-colonial states (Brazil,
India, South Africa, etc) produced an ‘accord’ – a brief memo of vague
aims and even vaguer pledges. Completely sidelined, the Cop15 assembly
merely ‘noted’ the accord. Almost immediately, China’s representative,
Su Wei, announced that, as it was not a formal UN agreement, China
reserved the right to repudiate even the accord.

This fiasco again demonstrates the impotence of the UN on important
issues. Unless the major powers agree on a course of action – ruled out
in the case of reducing carbon emissions – the UN cannot take effective
action. The failure of the Cop15 assembly to produce an agreement was
not merely the result of manoeuvres by this or that recalcitrant
government. It reflects the inevitable clash of interests between rival
national states, each pursuing its own power, prestige and economic
advantage. They may seek to guard themselves against the worst effects
of global warming, but they want to dump the costs onto other states.

Protests meet ‘Cop15’ summit fiasco

The fate of Cop15 lay in the hands of the two dominant powers, the US
and China, who are jointly responsible for half of all world carbon
emissions. Neither could broker a deal. Neither would sign up to any
regulatory regime not designed to meet their own requirements. Their
tactics made any consensus agreement in the Cop15 assembly impossible,
and resulted in the vacuous accord.

The role of the US

Obama poses as a champion of action to curb global warming. But the US,
still the only global superpower, no longer has the authority to broker
even a half-effective deal between the major powers, let alone forge a
consensus in the Cop15 assembly. This underlines the decline of US
imperialism. Contrast Obama’s failure on climate change with the
position of the US at the end of the second world war. At that time, US
imperialism sponsored the framework institutions of the post-war
capitalist order: the United Nations itself, the Bretton Woods money
system based on the dollar, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
the IMF, World Bank, etc. Its role at that time rested on the power and
prestige it had accumulated during the second world war and in the broad
upswing of the world capitalist economy.

Today, the US’s position is very different. Its intervention in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere has undermined its authority.
Economically, it is massively in debt to China. On climate change,
moreover, the US has a truly abysmal record. Under Bush and before, the
US refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol or endorse other international
agreements. The US has the highest per capita emissions, twice the level
of Europe and Japan, and four to ten times the levels of China and
India. Yet, the US has the technology and the infrastructure to turn to
more energy-efficient methods and renewable sources of energy. But the
majority of big business refuses to curtail its profit-making activities
in order to move in this direction.

Obama arrived in Copenhagen with pathetically limited proposals for
carbon reduction: a 17% cut over 2005 levels, the equivalent of a mere
4% reduction over 1990 levels, the benchmark being used by most other
countries. At the same time, the US tried to bully poor countries and
semi-developed industrial economies, like India and Brazil, into
accepting more stringent targets than the US is prepared to accept
itself. This tactic pushed a group of the poorer countries (the
so-called G77) into aligning itself with China. This allowed China, in
the backroom talks, to formulate an accord that placed no binding
targets on China or anyone else.

Obama and Chinese Premier, Wen Jinbao

China’s role

China’s delegation made sure that the Cop15 conference did not produce
any effective agreement. In the closed-door, backroom discussions they
even objected to other countries pledging themselves to any specific
objectives. They were determined to prevent even the preliminary
formation of an international regulatory regime that might, in the
future, tie them to strict targets and international inspection. ‘A
smoking dragon in sheep’s clothing’, the Chinese representatives
sheltered behind a number of poor countries, notably Sudan, which are
hostile to any kind of UN-sponsored arrangement.

China is developing a big wind and solar industry. The regime is
undoubtedly concerned about the adverse effects of global warming and
other environmental degradation, particularly its potential for
fomenting social unrest. For now, however, it is not prepared to accept
any slowing of its industrial growth which is overwhelmingly based on
coal-fired energy production.

Europe was more or less sidelined at Cop15. The EU could afford to make
grand, symbolic gestures, for instance, for a 20% reduction of carbon
emissions by 2020 and $15 billion a year to poor countries – if matched
by the US. But Europe’s promises were conditional on a UN agreement.
Without a deal, Europe’s promises may remain essentially symbolic.

Catastrophic failure

Nicholas Stern, who was commissioned by Britain’s New Labour government
to report on climate change, said that “climate change is a result of
the greatest market failure the world has seen”. Failure to effectively
tackle the environmental problems, he warned, would have catastrophic
economic and social consequences. Effective measures, he noted, will be
very expensive: but the longer they are postponed the more of a burden
they will be. The serious strategists of capitalism accept these
conclusions, which are based on an overwhelming body of scientific
evidence. Some sections of big business also recognise the dangers and,
moreover, see the development of green technology as a new and highly
profitable field of investment. Yet overwhelmingly, big business, driven
by short-term profitability, refuses to accept even minimal overhead
costs of countering global warming.

”System change, not climate change!”

The Copenhagen fiasco shows that capitalist governments are incapable of
overcoming the short-sighted resistance of big business to effective
action. The failure of capitalist leaders everywhere to effectively
tackle global warming and other environmental problems is an expression
of the underlying contradictions of capitalism. The technological
potential exists to switch to renewable forms of energy and reduce
energy use while increasing production. Under economic planning,
technological solutions could be rapidly developed for most existing
problems, despite the legacy of capitalist destruction. However,
capitalist relations of production stand in the way, above all, the
private ownership of the means of production and the fetters of the
nation state.

National economies are dominated by a handful of big banks and
industrial monopolies. World trade is dominated by giant multinational
corporations. They produce and trade for profit and regard the social
costs – environmental destruction and social degradation – as
‘off-balance-sheet’ items. As far as they are concerned, someone else
can pick up the bills.

Global warming that affects the planet’s atmosphere, the seas, and the
climates of whole continents, cannot be dealt with within the framework
of nation states. This is particularly true given the enormous
disparities of power and wealth between different states.

Many of the 100,000 demonstrators on the streets of Copenhagen
(including a large contingent from the CWI) recognised that global
warming cannot be overcome within the framework of capitalism. ‘Our
planet, not your profits’, ‘System change, not climate change’, were
prominent slogans.

Combating global warming requires worldwide economic planning, which is
impossible on the basis of the market, which operates through anarchic
competition. Planning requires the public ownership of the big banks and
industrial monopolies. To ensure they are run in the interests of
society as a whole, there should be democratic planning bodies of
elected representatives of workers, consumers and the wider public.
International trade and investment would also have to be planned to
overcome the grotesque inequalities that exist. The planned use of
resources would ensure that economic growth would not be at the expense
of further environmental damage. Human society would begin to develop in
harmony with nature.

Is this just a dream? In reality, the forces for change are already on
the move. Internationally, workers, poor farmers, the dispossessed, and
sections of the middle class are being forced into struggle against the
intolerable conditions imposed by a pathologically decaying capitalist
system. Increasingly, system change – the idea of an alternative
socialist form of society – is gaining support as the guiding aim of
struggle. The alternative is the nightmare of climate disaster and
social catastrophe.